Coincidences Vs. Caused Events
Measuring the probability of any series of coincidences is the most common method of evaluating and determining mere coincidence or connected causality.
The mathematically naive person seems to have a more acute awareness than the specialist of the basic paradox of probability theory, over which philosophers have puzzled ever since Pascal initiated that branch of science (for the purpose of improving the gambling prospects of a philosopher friend, the Chevalier de Méré). The paradox consists, loosely speaking, in the fact that probability theory is able to predict with uncanny precision the overall outcome of processes made up out of a large number of individual happenings, each of which in itself is unpredictable. In other words, we observe a large number of uncertainties producing a certainty, a large number of chance events creating a lawful total outcome. —Arthur Koestler, The Roots of Coincidence| "... it is only the manipulation of uncertainty that interests us. We are not concerned with the matter that is uncertain. Thus we do not study the mechanism of rain; only whether it will rain." |
| —Dennis Lindley, "The Philosophy of Statistics", The Statistician (2000) |
To establish cause and effect (causality) is notoriously difficult, expressed by the widely accepted statement "correlation does not imply causation". In statistics, it is generally accepted that observational studies can give hints, but can never establish cause and effect. With the probability paradox considered, it would seem that the larger the set of coincidences, the more certainty rises and the more it appears that there is some cause behind the effects of this large-set certainty of random, coincidental events.
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Famous quotes containing the words coincidences, caused and/or events:
“Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Don’t forget what I discovered—that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)